Tag Archives: paroxetine

By mid of November, our plan was counting 3 more therapy sessions to go. I had been feeling good for months, but there was an image that was still hurting pretty bad every time it surfaced: it was the memory of those awful days, in which my worst anxiety had kept my body trapped inside my house and my life trapped inside my head. My therapist welcomed me with her usual smile: “Today we can address those memories, by going back to EMDR.” [1] We had used EMDR for the first couple of sessions, then spontaneously moved to a more…

I really wonder what you are expecting from a post with such a nerdy title. Anyway, don’t panic, there won’t be any philosophy or quantum physics involved; only, as usual, the story of my journey through (and with) anxiety. As you may have learned from my posts so far, my healing process after my breakdown has seemed pretty smooth, even if it has taken some time, the need to discover and use several new “tools” and, most of all, quite a huge effort. In these months I’ve been reading and listening to hundreds of opinions about how non-linear the healing…

By mid May, I was actually starting to feel better. I had been going to work every day for the last month, my fears about my best friend and me were getting thinner, time to go to sleep was still a critical moment, but insomnia was no longer the huge problem it had been. One day, it was a Saturday afternoon, I was supposed to go shopping for groceries with my brother. He wound up having some other things to do in the end and, without even thinking about it that much, I heard myself saying: “Don’t worry, I’ll go…

Not quitting Paroxetine and starting Xanax were not the only resolutions I made that day. I tried to shake off the image that I had of myself as an ill person, or at least, I made my first attempt at it. My bedroom, as well as part of the rest of the house, was filled with all the stuff I had been using for my many problems: antacids, milk enzymes, anti-spasm meds, melatonin, tons of paper tissues and medical prescriptions were everywhere. I carefully removed every trace of my sufferings from my sight. The only remaining boxes were Paroxetine in…

The afternoon after my first therapy session, my GP wanted to see me again to know how I was. I shared with her my positive impressions about that beginning of therapy and she sentenced “Ok, so that’s all you were needing”. Not really. The following day everything started again as usual: fears, lack of appetite, stomachache, tachycardia and all the rest. I spent some more days like that, counting the hours separating me from the second therapy session, that was going to occur two weeks later. Then I got back to my GP: no, therapy was probably not all I…